Journal of Sacred Work

Today's meditation was written by Cathy Self, Senior Vice-President for the Baptist Healing Trust.

Rabia al-Basri, an influential female Islamic saint of the 8th century and a central figure in the Sufi tradition, wrote of love in a short poem titled "Perfect Stillness":

Love is/ the perfect stillness/ and the greatest excitement, and most profound act,/ and the word almost as complete/ as His name.

She was quite young when she was separated from her parents, homeless, stolen and sold into slavery. History tells us Rabia was both physically and sexually abused from an early age, finally gaining her freedom in her fifties. She understood the suffering and degradation of unwanted touch, and yet felt the beauty of Love's healing. She once wrote: Show me where it hurts, God said, and every cell in my body burst into tears before His tender eyes.

Caregivers all over this country, and the world, reach out every day with tender eyes to offer shelter, physical care, and healing with love. What is it that compels us, in Erie Chapman's words from yesterday's journal, to "confront disease, reach into the wounds of the injured, embrace the woman or man or child who has been raped?" Why do we return day after day, night after long night, to meet need with love? Perhaps Rabia's words give some insight:

The sky gave me its heart

because it knew mine was not large enough to care

for the earth the way

it did.

Why is it we think of God so much?

Why is there so much talk

about love?

When an animal is wounded

no one has to tell it, “You need to heal”; so naturally it will nurse

itself the best it can.

My eye kept telling me, “Something is missing from

all I see.” So it went in search of the cure.

The cure for me was His Beauty, the remedy –

for me was to

love.